The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1887-08-16
CANES AND CRUTCHES.
A Dealer Claims That They Are Suppiant-
ing Artificial Limbs.

YES, sir. said q maker of artificial
limbs in San Francisco. "men are get
ting to be proud of plain wooden legs
and empty sleeves. The time has not
long gone by when L received nu-
merous orders for legs. with feet at
tached, wondrously combined with
cork, wood and steel, with springs that
moved rs finely as those in a watch; in
fact, legs that, with their trousers COW
erings, were quite as presentable i'm
good company rs the lost limbs they
replaced. If any attention was at
tracted by the somewhat stiff move
mentS of their owners. the plying OBJ
servers would say: Poor fellow, he
has touch of the rheumatism. / can
sympathize with him; am troubled
with it myself occasionally
Nobody then ever said to 4 friend
/ who asked him To take walk: You
/ must pardon me, but / have only one
leg. He made some different excuse:
illness i'll his family; indisposition; any
thing but inability. But how is it now?
Why, fellow who, half dozen years
ago. poked his leg into a sewer when
he was staggering to his home a little
before dawn, and fractured it SO badly
that no repairs were possible, leans
back in his chair and, resting = dirty
stick upon the table, while he quietly
smokes big cigar, says to the COM
pany: There, gentlemen. is what
Shiloh left me. I'm an old soldier
and, hang me. I'm proud of it,
81 believe the manufacturers of
canes are responsible for the decrease
in the sale of artistically made crutches
You see man with q strong stick in
his hand can manage to hobble along
tolerably well, even though he has
only one lower limb TO support him.
and if he has i'm addition plain. old
fashioned wooden-leg. not undermined
by drink, as one of Dickens characters
says they sometimes become, he can
walk about well enough to finish all
the business that one-legged man is
ever likely to be called upon to do. Of
course men knew this long ago. but it
is only lately that they have taken it
into their stupid heads to imagine that
one leg is better than two, if the lie
with which they account for the loss of
the missing one is only sufficiently
skillfully constructed to be credited.
at is for this reason that / have
taken to selling walking sticks and
canes. False legs won't support me
any longer. Sir Walter Scott said:
Literature is good walking stick, but
bad crutch.' 1t was q very good
crutch for him, however, but apart
from that little inconsistency he did
not weigh his words. A walking-stick
is a crUtch. more'> the pity and = cheap
one. too.
''ihcn. there are - great number of
men who carry their love for elegant
canes into the regions of foppery, where
n the best false leg that was ever made
was only intended to conceal its ident-
i;v. and could not be- worn more grace
fully by a fop than by penSiOned
miner. Canes with silver tops with |
which the market has been glutted for |
the past two Years. silver being cheap:) !
sticks so light that if the fingers grasp- !
in" them opened they would he apt to /,
tly up instead of falling down: sticks so
heavy that they seriously handicap
their owners in LONG walk, and would |
disappoint both hound and hunter by |
sinking if one of them were thrown |
into pond for a water-dog to replevy; |
canes with the head of the missing |
link on the handles, and canes with !
out any handles at all. They combine
to knock the false LEG from under the
men who tell the same story. whether
they left limb oil the battlefield eff !
Gettysburg or in the vicinity of Penn
Sylvania coal-mine."
'.Ironwood and iignHm rita make the
favorite canes for heavy men; bamboo
and malacca sticks are more in vogue
among light ones. The redwood of
British Columbia has recently come
into the market. and makes about Is
heavy a stick as any wood known. 1t
has rich port-wine color, and il very
I'm the event of all argu-
mcnt, it would strike home when logic
failed. for it is as convincingly weighty
as bar of iron, and has a great adyan-
tage over sword or pistol. inasmuch
rs il never misses fire. and its pOSSesSor
can't cut or pierce himself by falling
upon it in an unguarded moment
Another objection to the artificial
leg is that man walking with one
through the snow feels the cold in his
toes. although he has no toes to feel it
in. 1t is very queer. but it is an abso-
lutte fact. The sensation of chill re-
mains. even when three feet of iron.
wood. cork or steel spans the space be-
tween the cold earth and the sensitive
point. Whether q man wears 4 we'll
a - Il Il L.. II